Page 51 of Passing Notes
“Why does everything have to feel so right when you kiss me?” She turned back to ask.
“You know why, don’t you?”
She bit her lip and nodded.
I reached out and grabbed the back of her neck to pull her in for one more kiss. “You’re mine, Clara.”
“I think maybe I always have been.”
I watched as she crossed our yards and made it onto her porch to go inside.
The ping of my text notification made me smile as I headed back up to bed.
CHAPTER 16
CLARA
Whenever I see you at your locker, I wish I could kiss you. - Nick
Isat down at Clay Meadows’s desk—senior honors English and Shakespeare—and stared out the window on the other side of the room. I did not have the energy to deal with this job today and I wanted to go home. The rain pounded in a relentless beat, almost in time with the pounding in my head. We were supposed to have a thunderstorm and I was dreading it; thunder and lightning scared me, and always had.
I wished I could quit and go back to my plants, my podcasts, and my Rear Window-ing. But I couldn’t, not yet. Not until I was sure this thing with Gracie and her bully bitch trio was over and done with once and for all. I might stick it out for the rest of the school year, just to be sure.
But Gracie hardly needed me here anymore. Her ankle was healed, and Marianne had become too smart to target her again at school. The infamous cafeteria Snack Pack incident had been a one-timer. Once she caught sight of me on campus and realized what I was there for, she had gone into stealth mode.
Unfortunately, Gracie wouldn’t let me do any of what I was best at to get her out of the online situation, so my hands were tied there. I was not allowed to create fake social media accounts for return bullying and counter rumors. She wouldn’t even let me call Marianne’s mother and put a stop to it the adult way. She was convinced they would just move on.
All this passivity was unlike the Gracie I knew. I blamed Everett’s influence, possibly Willa’s too. They were just too good. They were wonderful examples of healthy adults in a successful and loving relationship—which I grudgingly had to admit was probably for the best. She was better living with them than a hot mess like me. Despite my years of therapy, I was still a disaster in way too many ways to count.
I’d had to resort to glaring at Marianne and her little friend group in the hallways to let them know I was still onto them and their wicked ways. It was frustrating, and boring, and not at all what I had signed up for. I wanted to thwart them and be the big sister hero, dang it. I wanted to make Gracie feel okay about being on campus without Weston and was pissed that I couldn’t.
But what had been on my mind the most over the last week or so was homecoming and what Nick and I had done that night in his bed.
I wasn’t hiding out, but I wasn’t putting myself out there either. There were too many feelings between us now to deny them so I had asked him for a pause, which I felt had to be one of my more brilliant ideas. There would be no more pulling away or keeping my feelings to myself. Being honest was the right thing to do. I still needed time to sort myself out.
My endless years of therapy had not prepared me to have Nick back in my life. Probably because ever since him, I’d only been using half of my heart. I knew now the other half had been a shriveled up little shell of itself, sitting dormant and useless in my chest cavity. Him being back had awakened parts of me I’d put to sleep a long time ago, and I wasn’t ready to feel this much. It scared me. I worried for the both of us. The last thing I wanted to was hurt him or be hurt.
In retrospect, having sex with him so soon was probably a mistake. And though I didn’t regret it, it put my heart on the line even more than it had been before. I also wanted to do it again immediately.
None of the heat between us had dissipated over the years, but more than that, I still craved the way he made me feel—like I mattered, like I was special, like I was an important part of his life and he wanted to keep me in it. But we had to keep things a secret for the sake of his kids. I understood it, but it felt a little too reminiscent of our past and therefore still bothered me. I wasn’t some random woman he’d started dating, dang it.
I had to get my head on straight or I’d end up being the one to hurt him. I would do anything to avoid that.
It wasn’t even lunch yet and I was already over this entire day. My head had been aching since I woke up and my stomach was a roiling mess of nerves.
Clay’s classroom was right next door to Nick’s, and it had been driving me to distraction since I got here. Thankfully, I’d made it to my prep period and the kids were at band or PE or art or wherever. The point was they were gone, and I could finally have a moment to myself. I felt so wretched I was tempted to lie on the floor and take a damn nap. Instead I let my head drop to the desk as my hands went to my agonized stomach.
What the hell was wrong with me? I couldn’t be pregnant. It had only been a week since homecoming and in addition to the condom we used, I was on the pill.
Maybe I’d caught something. I did work every day surrounded by a bunch of germy kids. Granted, teens were big kids, but they were still a mess.
A cold sweat broke out over my upper lip and along my hairline as shimmering white filled the edges of my vision and a wave of nausea washed over me, turning my stomach into a pulsating knot.
Shit.
This was not nerves. I was about to barf.
Something was definitely going around campus. I didn’t know if it was the stomach flu or a bad cold, or another dang virus sent straight up from hell. I’d marked at least a third of the kids absent today, damn it.
